While there are certainly parents who may be thinking they are "buying scholarships", I don't think that is the case as much as some people think.
My daughter pitched and played competitive slowpitch up through when she was 12, and absolutely love the experience as did I. (Her team finished 5th at the ASA A slowpitch nationals in Georgia when she was 12). When she knew she was switching over to fastpitch, she told me she wanted to keep playing travel ball and be a pitcher there too even though she had never thrown a fast pitch in her life. So I went out and found an instructor who was recommended and paid the price he asked. He was a little higher than what some of her friends' parents were paying, but I was convinced he was better so, yes, supply and demand. Why was I willing to pay it ... because my little girl wanted to try it. After she got started and enjoyed it, she then declared she wanted to be the best high school pitcher she could be. After she had some success at ages 14-15 and started pitching in high school, she got some encouragement that she could probably pitch in college some day and maybe even get an athletic scholarship, so that was nice to hear but what really drove her was her desire to be the best high school pitcher she could be, and to get her and her team some success and recognition.
At some point in time, we felt it was important that she took her pitching instruction to the next level, and so she started going to Hillhouse. Granted, he was a lot less expensive then, but he helped take her to the next level. She knew when she was 15-16 that she wasn't ever going to be good enough to be D1 college pitcher, nor did she have any interest in going to a big college anyhow, but she still had the goal to one day pitch in college. When it finally came time to make her college decision, she had narrowed her choice down to one D2 school where she would receive some athletic moneys, and one D3 school where she obviously would not. Of course, I left the decision to her and she ultimately chose the D3 school where she both got a great education, and she also had a very nice softball career where she not only became the winningest pitcher in school history, but she also was a team captain and got to bat every game and play outfield when she wasn't pitching.
The point is this ... I spent a ton of money at fairly premium rates for a lot of years not so that she could get a scholarship, but so she had a chance to live her dreams of playing travel softball in the summer, being a very good high school pitcher, and playing in college. These are memories that both she and I will always have and looking back, I would have paid 5 times what I paid for those lessons if I had known it would have resulted in what it did ... and no, not even a dime in athletic scholarship money.
